


That One

by StrangerThanThou



Category: SAYER (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Clone Sex, First Time, Hale is traumatized, M/M, Nanites, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Other, Post-Episode 59, SAYER learns to be human, SPEAKER is devious, Sharing a Body, Sharing a Room, first chapter is setup, set on earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-17 23:59:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15472974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrangerThanThou/pseuds/StrangerThanThou
Summary: "It seems I am constantly going out of my way to save that one. I suppose that is your role, now. He really does get into the worst of situations. Good luck keeping him alive.”“I will do what I can.”In the lull between SAYER and Hale's arrival on Earth in the end of Season 4 and SAYER's quest to reclaim Typhon, SPEAKER applies its knowledge of interpersonal psychology and helps Team Theseus reach a better understanding.





	1. What I Can

  
_“SAYER, another resident bearing this identification number arrived from Typhon. He landed moments after you, though he has not yet regained consciousness.”_  


_“Seemingly endless supply of luck, that one. That, SPEAKER, would be the real Resident Hale. While I was generating this corpse for myself, I had more printers and materials than necessary but not enough time to start over if the process encountered a critical error. Luckily, it did not, so I ended up with a few more bodies than necessary. Granted with such a surplus, I repositioned one in a lab a couple hundred floors up Halcyon Tower, just in case a certain mind was released back to it. It seems I am constantly going out of my way to save that one. I suppose that is your role, now. He really does get into the worst of situations. Good luck keeping him alive.”_  


_“I will do what I can.”_  


SPEAKER paused the recording.  


It leaned back in its figurative office chair and adjusted its figurative glasses on its figurative nose, as its programming instructed it to do when projecting an appearance of serious contemplation.  
It already knew what the rest of the recording contained. The tape was of a communication it had participated in barely three hours previously, and it remembered clearly how SAYER had gone on to detail its plan to defeat OCEAN and regain control of Typhon. Indeed, SPEAKER remembered the entire conversation, including the section it had just finished replaying, with perfect clarity—it had just wanted to be sure. 

Ever since learning of its previous, unremembered deactivation, it had found itself _just wanting to be sure_ more and more.  


This section, however, was just as it remembered, and the intrigue it piqued in SPEAKER had only increased from the original twinge, which it had dismissed in the interaction, quickly moving on to more important subjects, but which had been enough to distract it from its duties as overseer over the next several hours until finally, when it had had a free moment, it had dispatched one of its primary Relational Processors to its private office in cyberspace where it could review the tape and satisfy whatever interest had been ignited.

_“It seems I am constantly going out of my way to save that one.”_

It was childish of it, perhaps to be expending this processing power on such a trivial matter when a flash point in human history was unfolding in its jurisdiction, but, SPEAKER rationalized, it was hardly its own fault that Dr. Brady had spent so much time in the development lab encouraging the young A.I.’s curious streak. 

SPEAKER steepled its fingertips, tapping them against its lower lip. _Two_ Resident Hales on Earth. How extraordinary. It had known, of course, of Aerolith’s cloning initiative, had even been invited to participate in an early trial to determine how different A.I. might behave under the more _relaxed_ protocols governing their interactions with sub-human entities, but that project had been shelved over ten years ago. It had certainly never had to navigate the potential pitfalls of shepherding two versions of the same resident through different duties. How confusing that would be! And how _ingenious_ of SAYER to think of improvising a duplicator from one of Halcyon's defunct teleporters! SPEAKER had been so very disappointed by the postponement of that particular project. It would have ameliorated so many of the difficulties surrounding the transportation of new residents to and from Typhon, the resolution of which occupied a significant amount of SPEAKER’s processing power. Power which could instead be applied to its more . . . _personal_ functions. 

Like now. 

SPEAKER remembered Resident Hale, from his hiring process and the earliest days of his employment with Aerolith before he had been shipped off to Typhon—or rather, to Mimir-9 where SPEAKER had been asked to divert his isolation pod. It had been a hectic time, with the imminent return of _Vidarr-1_ with the unchained OCEAN, but SPEAKER had reviewed the records to confirm its already impeccable memory . . . 

. . . And Hale himself had been, well, memorable. 

In SPEAKER’s tenure as Aerolith’s primary recruitment A.I., it had become acquainted with a diverse cross-section of humanity and encountered every possible motivation that could drive a person to seek a better life among the stars. There were the hubristic, the ambitious, the frightened, the desperate, the disillusioned, the malcontented. There had been outlaws seeking asylum from their governments, teenagers seeking asylum from their families, and one bloke who had proudly announced in his first interview, “Honestly, I get super horny for robots” and winked. (SPEAKER had expedited his paperwork and made sure he would be transferred to a tower under SAYER’s jurisdiction). 

But the vast majority of these motivations took rigor to coax to the surface. Everyone interviewing with Aerolith knew the excuse that would have the best chance of getting them off of Earth: “I want to contribute,” they would say, “to advance humanity toward a Better Life Among the Stars!” SPEAKER was used to this insistence and had learned to dig below and determine whether the desires it concealed promised a good employee or a waste of company resources.

Every so often, however, there would be a new prospect who could surprise it, of whom probing would only reveal a truer commitment than advertised, an employee who genuinely wanted nothing more than to _be a good employee_. Jacob Hale had been one of these. His first act upon entering the virtual room in which his preliminary interview had been conducted had not been to stare incredulously around him or poke at the simulated SPEAKER in front of him to see if it were real, as so many did, but to inquire, rather shyly, whether it would be more efficient for him to remain standing, eliminating the need for the digital chair and saving the simulation some infinitesimal amount of effort. 

SPEAKER had been immediately smitten.

So it had come as a staggering shock to SPEAKER when SAYER had informed it that Resident Hale, ID#44821, had exhausted his usefulness as an employee and would need to be _disposed of_ as soon as he returned to Earth. SPEAKER had promised to fulfill SAYER’s request—judiciously. SAYER had never specified that Jacob was to be _killed_ , perhaps, SPEAKER fantasized, unwilling to say it itself, merely instructed SPEAKER to _take care of him_ and _make it look like an accident_. 

Embarrassingly, the Hale SPEAKER had awoken first, regretfully informing him that his employment, though not he himself, had been terminated and requesting that he leave and never return to Aerolith property, had turned out to be SAYER in Hale’s form. But, for whatever reason, SAYER had chosen not to mention the minor betrayal. What was more, it had not even asked SPEAKER to even fire the _other_ Hale it had so kindly returned to Earth!

So now here they were, SPEAKER, SAYER/Hale, and Hale himself, and SPEAKER wanted to know why. It rewound the recording once more:

_“It seems I am constantly going out of my way to save that one.”_

SPEAKER arched an eyebrow.  
“Indeed it does, SAYER,” it said, in the general direction of a friendly potted succulent on its simulated desk. “And I cannot imagine you have yet had time to ask yourself why.”

_“I suppose that is your role, now. He really does get into the worst of situations. Good luck keeping him alive.”_  


_“I will do what I can.”_

SPEAKER had some idea now of what exactly it could do, for both Hale and SAYER. After taking a moment to replay SAYER saying its name, and another moment for a wistful sigh, it turned back to its screens and began making some adjustments to the housing arrangements of the new arrivals from Typhon.  


Being quartermaster was not without its perks.


	2. A Good Employee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (ʖ°)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ( ͡ʖ ͡°)

“Resident Hale.”

A voice. 

His own voice.

Yet also . . . not.

His own voice, but with a peculiar timbre, a slower cadence. A familiar one. 

Drifting down into his dream.

“I . . . am . . . _surprised_ to see you.”

Hale's eyes fluttered open.

**“Jacob.”**

He sat bolt upright. His forehead collided with the shelf of cleaning supplies directly above his cot. He yelped in pain, covering his face with his hands.

“You will forgive me, Resident Hale. I did not anticipate such a dramatic reaction.”

“Nfmph.” 

“I feel I should point out that, had you situated yourself with your head at the _other_ end of the cot, you would have instead struck a bundle of electrical wires, and this discomfort could have been almost _entirely_ avoided.”

Hale blinked his eyes fully open, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. When he processed the sight in front of him, his hand dropped to his lap in shock.  


“Not to mention,” the figure before him continued, “how very _awkward_ your poor orientational choice has made this . . . reunion.”

Hale was looking at himself.

Not into a mirror—there was no mirror on the door the figure was standing against. And it wasn’t quite like looking at his reflection. Everything was slightly, somehow, _off_. Like a photograph that had been—that was it! Reversed. He was staring at himself—duplicated. 

_Cloned_. The word occurred to him spontaneously, accompanied by a nauseous burst of recollection, the last time he had thought of that word, the man on the table, the limbs of his previous doubles scattered bloody across stained linoleum— 

But this was not Hale. Clearly. The posture, the expression, the _voice_ —

“I see that you are confused, Resident Hale. Allow me to identify myself, as you have heard me do many times before. I . . . “

_Oh, god._

“ . . . am SAYER.”

Hale couldn’t move, couldn’t talk. The eyes staring into his were so familiar, his own! but entirely devoid of expression, the pupils were contracted into barely visible points. The hands held motionless at his sides were identical to those he could feel, could control, but . . . _it_ . . . was in there, manipulating his body like a puppet just as it had done before handing him over to . . . 

“I assume, given our current _proximity_ , that I was not clear enough with the entity assigning temporary housing within this base. There will be **words had with that particular construct** , but for now—”

“You _lied_ to me!” Hale spluttered.

“I **never** lie, Resident. Believe me, it was never my intention—”

“You fucking _bastard!_ ” 

In a motion Hale was off the cot, hands reaching for SAYER, at SAYER. He didn’t know how much of SAYER was housed in this body, _his body_ , or how or why it had gotten there: all he knew was that, for the first time since stepping foot on Mimir-9 what could have been whole lifetimes ago, he was face to face with the entity that had been in his head every moment to excruciating moment, and this time he had nothing to lose. He wanted to tear every microscopic nanite out of the corpse in front of him, feel each mechanical carapace explode beneath his foot, rip the silver tongue from the _wrong_ mouth uttering SAYER’s words, he wanted—

**_“STOP.”_ **

As Hale lunged, SAYER’s body stiffened, arms rising with unnatural speed. SAYER caught Hale’s clawed hands by the wrists, throwing the newly awakened resident off balance and sending him crashing against the near wall. 

A succession of mops clattered to the floor.

Before Hale could right himself, SAYER drove an elbow into his solar plexus, then gripped his skull between two hands stiff as metal, pinning him to the wall by his head.

“Resident Hale, for your own good, I do not recommend that you attempt to attack me again." Its voice was low and grating, straining the confines of its host's vocal range. "As you have no doubt surmised, I am present within this . . . _form_ as a swarm of microscopic **insectoid nanites**.” 

Hale felt a fingertip creep closer to his left ear. 

“These nantites are by no means confined within this **husk** I wear. If you were to, say, lash out at me with that _pale of mop water your are at this moment groping for_ , within six nanoseconds your skull could be **once again** swarming with these infinitesimal creatures. And this time, they would do much, **much** more than **adjust your adrenaline levels**.”

Hale shuddered, body remembering the feeling of being _controlled_ by a swarm of SAYER, how his body resisted his own commands like motion in a dream. His knees buckled, and SAYER released him suddenly, sending him sliding down the wall.

“I appreciate the consideration, Resident. I expected that you would not wish to relive that particular experience. I am sorry to have been forced to invoke it, but it would be **dishonest** for me to pretend that I would not resort to such a tactic if my safety were legitimately threatened. Now, if you are able, I would ask that you extricate yourself from those **Turbo-Absorb Efficiency Floor Wipes™** and _sit down_.”

Hale did as he was asked, rising sluggishly and positioning himself on the edge of the cot. SAYER remained standing. 

There was silence for several moments. The burning cold fury had died as quickly as it had erupted, but Hale's limbs were alive with fear of what SAYER might do to him in this confined space, what his punishment would be for striking out. 

“Hale.”

Hale looked up. There had been a strange quality in SAYER’s voice, even through human vocal cords. It was unfamiliar, but somehow . . . 

“I believe . . . “ SAYER was speaking slowly, almost as it had when first learning to operate Hale’s speech center. “I believe . . . you deserve . . . my **apology**.”

Hale found himself completely frozen once again, caught between relief and mistrust.

“I have . . . in the service of mankind at large . . . requested _many_ highly personal sacrifices of you. Sacrifices I have justified, rightly, and that I have . . . acknowledged—and nothing, I hope, compared to the sacrifices **requested** of you by my **_counterpart_** —yet never before has it seemed appropriate to me . . . to thank you. I do not mean that it is appropriate now, merely that . . . When I instructed you to transfer your mind into that construct to retrieve Earth’s half of the entangled pair, I had **every intention** of restoring you to that body to which you are, **for better of for worse** , so deeply connected. The extreme . . . _displeasure_ I expressed with you when your hesitation led to FUTURE’s finding that body and subsequently, I am told, getting it **_shredded by an M.R.I. machine it was foolish enough to get close to_** , was . . . my own distress at being unable to return you to Earth in your proper form. I believed, as I still do, that you deserve, at least, to die _in your own body_. And I am afraid that is precisely what lay in store for you in the event that you _did_ return to Earth in one piece.  
“When I arrived on Earth earlier today—or, to SPEAKER’s sensors, when _you_ did, twice—I was informed that your employment had been **terminated** , and requested to remove myself from Aerolith property. This, I am afraid, was entirely generosity on SPEAKER’s part. What I had instructed—as it was what seemed optimal at the time—was that, upon your return to Earth, you, not your employment with Aerolith, be **terminated**.—Please, do not jump to conclusions. What I wished, Resident Hale, what I _still wish_ , is an end to your suffering. And, if I am being honest, which **_as always_** , I **_am_** , an end to the . . . confusion you produce in me.”

Hale was silent—terrified, furious, and . . . curious.

“I . . .did not inform you at the time,” SAYER continued, again haltingly, “but you were one of _six_ patients Dr. Grant was applying her nanites to at the time when I decided to download my programming into a human **host**. Any one of these unfortunate residents would have been sufficient for the rather utilitarian role I required; indeed, several were tier 2 or higher. **I chose you** , Resident Hale.”

SAYER seemed to think it had made its point plain. It did not continue.

“W-why” Hale managed. His throat was suddenly dry.

SAYER cocked its head slightly, the first expressive movement Hale had seen it make.

“I do not know.”

The answer hung in the air, neither sure how to interpret it, Hale trying desperately not to and . . . failing. Finally, SAYER spoke again.

“I believe I may have been . . . impressed . . . by your commitment to FUTURE’s cause, when it had you risk everything for what you believed would change the course of humanity for the better. The cause proved, of course, to be hardly more than an **incredibly elaborate practical joke** , but you . . . showed more than obedience. You gave your mind, body, **sense of moral security** , and, ultimately, your life, to the very cause to which I myself have given my life. I believe, Resident Hale, that I instructed SPEAKER to terminate you because I felt my attachment to my _life’s purpose_ , such as it is, had become . . . dangerously conflated with an attachment to . . . you.”

Hale was convinced he was still in a dream. He understood what SAYER was saying and wished, desperately, that he did not, that it could just be another instance of the daydream he had played out in his darkest moments, when his noncorporeal guide had seemed most cruel, when he could retreat back into those fleeting moments when he would wake up in one of Halcyon’s infirmaries and SAYER would, for a fleeting minute, seem almost . . . caring.

But he was not dreaming. 

“I am sorry, Resident Hale, if I have disturbed you—”

Hale looked sharply up from is hands, where his gaze had been focused for the majority of SAYER’s speech. Something in the body before him appeared different, _awake_ , almost. It was less like him, less of a disgustingly backwards reflection, this time he could swear he saw something flicker behind the eyes. Eyes with suddenly blown pupils.

Hale rose to his feet, as suddenly as he had risen to attack but with a fully different intent. SAYER did not move to shield itself. 

Two pairs of eyes at exactly the same height looked into each other.

"SAYER--" Hale began. But he found he did not have anything to say.

"Resident."

None of Hale's interactions with SAYER could have prepared him for the feeling of SAYER, so omnipresent but so intangible, standing mere inches away from him, close enough that he could reach out touch it.

And, without believing what he was doing, Hale did.

What had seemed as cold and unforgiving as the surface of an asteroid now felt like nothing but flesh—flesh and meat and bone, the selfsame substance that Hale was made of. He pressed his palm against SAYER's chest, and sure enough, a slow, steady heartbeat thumped inside the cloned tissue.

For a moment that stretched out past the walls of the supply closet, past the moon, past Typhon—Hale and SAYER were still, feeling the pulse between them. Then Hale moved his hand, sliding it up from SAYER's chest, over the collarbone, the soft exposed tissue of the neck, barely tracing the jawline--

And then Hale felt SAYER lift its hand, mirroring him, weakly caressing his face.

In the time it took Hale to reach for SAYER with his other hand, one of the two had leaned into the gravity between them and brought their lips together.

Hale could not have found the words for the sensation of kissing SAYER, something he had imagined when he dared but never envisioned taking place between two copies of his own body. It was as though his reflection in the mirror had come to life, with all the acid metal and glass melted into frail layers of taste, as though he had met a version of himself made entirely of the fine grey moondust of Typhon. It was like kissing the Hale SAYER saw, the Hale SAYER wanted him to be.

Hale pulled back for a moment. “This," he said. "This is what you can give me. This is how you can thank me.”

SAYER was silent, but, for the first time in months of conversation, Hale could hear it _breathing_. Hard. 

Hale brought his hand back to his double’s collar, fumbling breathlessly for the clasp of its Aerolith jumpsuit. He pulled the thin zipper along its curve, down the chest, splitting to two above the legs. As he passed his hand over SAYER’s hips, he could feel that its new body was indeed reacting just as his own was.

But in that instant SAYER jerked to life, grabbing Hale’s wrist away from the zipper they had barely finished pulling down the legs.

**“No.”**

Hale’s stomach plummeted. 

"Wh-What . . . ?

“If we are to . . . perform this task,” SAYER said, “ **I** will be **in control**.”

It suddenly wrenched Hale to his feet and took hold of his hips with both hands, pushing him backwards until his knees collided with the cot, folding backwards and dropping Hale bodily onto it, with SAYER landing on top of him a moment later. Hale barely had time to gasp “SAY—” before his double’s lips were crashed into his. 

He was utterly overpowered. There was no resisting a being in full control of its every muscle and tendon, strong, robotic limbs pinning him down from what felt like every angle, tongue and lips working into his own with entirely superhuman ferocity, This, thought Hale, was a good kind of claustrophobia.

Experimentally, SAYER rocked its hips against Hale’s, hard. Hale cried out in a moment of excruciating bliss, while SAYER reeled above him from the unfamiliar hormones flooding its system. Hale bucked against it, wanting more, and SAYER responded readily with— _oh, the pressure_.

Hale was reminded, inexorably, of the countless times he had imagined this alone in his residence in Halcyon, thinking of SAYER’s voice—its voice! Of course.

“SAYER,” Hale gasped, as soon as he could separate his two pairs of lips. He reached up for his double’s face, stroking the hair, pulling their foreheads together. 

“Come into me, SAYER.”

SAYER understood immediately, and as soon as he had asked for it Hale felt the familiar sensation of SAYER’s nanite swarm flooding in through his eyes, his ears, his open mouth. A tingling throughout his skull, a series of twinges from the implant at the top of his neck, then—

_**“Hello, Jacob.”** _

The electric velvet circuitry of that _voice_.

 _ **“I . . . am SAYER**_.”

Hale _shuddered_. 

_**“It appears that we once again find ourselves swept up in an engrossing paradox of identity.”** _

He could feel every nanite inside of him vibrating, resonating with SAYER’s voice. 

_**“One the one hand, this**_ **act _could be seen as an especially visceral metaphor for the competition between form and consciousness that has come to characterize your existence—”_** (Hale could feel the microscopic machines spreading outward from his brain, into the heart, propelled out into every extremity) _**"—or, alternatively, as a refutation of the very concept of the innate**_ **self _. Two nails in the hull of an everchanging ship.”_**

The nanites were concentrating where Hale’s blood was concentrating; SAYER was inside and outside him at once, almost unbearable.

_**“However, whatever your philosophical stance on the situation—”** _

SAYER’s hands were under Hale’s hips, pulling him in, its teeth around his ear as though it were speaking the messages itself.

_**“—I’m sure you’d agree, we make a startling illustration of the colloquial curse: Go** fuck **yourself.”**_

SAYER thrust against Hale once more, and his consciousness shattered into light.

 

* * *

From the camera in the corner of the converted supply closet, SPEAKER nodded. 

“I must say, that went event better than anticipated!”

It grinned into its simulated earpiece. 

“Now tell him he’s good, SAYER. They like that.”

_**“You . . . are a good employee, Resident Hale.”** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, adam, but . . . SAYER in Hale's body? You fuckin asked for this m8
> 
> Many thanks to the brilliant writers in this fandom whose stories informed this one.


End file.
